With all due respect to Madrileños, Rome seems a far more fitting city for Mario Testino’s “Todo o Nada” exhibition, which opened Thursday evening at the Fondazione Memmo, than its debut venue, Madrid’s Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, gorgeous though that undoubtedly was. Consider the show’s theme: the beautiful, sensual tension that exists between being clothed and being nude (not naked, just to make the critical art-historical distinction here), documented in 54 exquisite Testino images, ranging from Nicole Kidman in dramatic Givenchy haute couture to a full-length shot of Demi Moore not wearing a stitch of anything, couture or otherwise. Where, after all, is that frisson more pronounced than in Rome? A city that seems to permanently exist in a collision between impeccably dressed signoras and acres of flesh sculpted from creamy marble, and has been ever since back in the day, when Rome was the kind of global/decadent superpower that can still get an HBO miniseries two-plus millennia later.

“As a concept, it often inspires me, the balance between the two opposites,” said Testino of his show’s theme at the exhibition’s opening party, which was cohosted by Silvia Venturini Fendi, Frida Giannini (sadly, missing in action), and Valentino’s Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri. Testino was unsure which (nude? attired?) he ultimately preferred for his work. “It all depends,” he said, laughing, “on the situation.” Directly after the opening, there was a dinner for Testino at Palazzo Ruspoli, with the likes of Franca Sozzani, Delfina Delettrez, designer Sergio Zambon, gallerist Lorcan O’Neill, Veronica Chou, and jeweler Osanna Visconti, where the topics of conversation alighted on Natalia Vodianova’s Love Ball in Paris the previous evening, the rapturous reception to Piccioli and Chiuri’s couture show, the surge of young artisanal-minded designers in Rome, and the places the city’s residents escape to on the weekend to beat the heat. Oh, and the best way to get to the next event, because it was nearing 12:00 a.m. by this time, and the Roman night was young. So on to Testino’s after-party at al Al Biondo Tevere, where in 1975 director Pier Paolo Pasolini sat for his last supper before his violent, and mystery-shrouded, death. History is, after all, everywhere here.